The Green Screen Handbook, 2nd Edition

Foreword

I may be biased, given the amount of my career devoted to it, but composite imagery and its enabling technology, traveling matte, are at the core of the art of visual effects. In turn, visual effects are basic to the very philosophic foundation of our art form—motion pictures, which commenced by reveling in the ability to depict the reality of life, such as the simple sneeze of Fred Ott, but then quite quickly set about conjuring not merely what was, but what could be—no matter how farfetched. (Just think, a scant six decades passed between Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon and Neil Armstrong actually landing on it.)

Film art (as with most art), being interpretive, requires editorializing—lots of editorializing. Include this, discard ...